FIMRC Project Anconcito, Ecuador

Happy Tuesday FIMRC Anconcito followers! Today we are highlighting the wonderful work of the Patels, a group of volunteers who visited us over New Years who are all pursuing medicine at different levels in their careers. They executed a fantastic talk on anemia to the mothers of our nutrition club, and capacitations on how to detect skin cancer and stay properly hydrated to our Diabetes club. Additionally, they even helped us begin our nutrition project in Balcón Encantado where we took weight, height and iron levels of 40 children and infants. We were so happy to have such a lively group of young volunteers here at the foundation and wish them the best of luck in their futures.

After five months of preparation, our local health promoters finished their campaign against adolescent pregnancy, “Métele un gol a tu futuro” (score a goal for your future), on November 23rd. With leadership from our FIMRC Anconcito Field Operations Manager, Luisa Cardona, and a local Peace Corps Volunteer Leader, Casey Healey, the promoters recruited eight soccer teams of local 10th graders from different high schools to learn about pregnancy prevention and safe s*x. The promoters presented various themes to their schoolmates varying from consent, to making a personal life plan (focusing on future goals and the steps to achieve those goals), and even methods of transmission for various s*xually transmitted infections. We are tremendously proud of our health promoters and the local FIMRC Anconcito and Peace Corps teams for their dedication and resiliency.

A few weeks ago, FIMRC had the fantastic opportunity to work with Dr. Lipsky, who specializes in domestic violence prevention. During her time here in Anconcito, she trained FIMRC staff, peace corps volunteers and other local organization members on how to lead focus groups centered on domestic violence in a caring, efficient and professional manner. In addition to all of this, she empowered the FIMRC team with tools and methods on how to analyze focus group results, and then appropriately teach local community groups about domestic violence. They gained the knowledge of how to identify a potential victim, when a situation might escalate, and what an individual can do when they know something is going on, amongst many other pivotal pieces of information. Additionally, FIMRC’s local high school health promotors campaigned against Domestic Violence in front of the community after Dr. Lipsky gave them strategies to end domestic violence and femicide here, and across the world. We are so grateful for her time, preparation and expertise and will continue to use the skills she gave all of us. ¡Ni una menos! Sherry Lipsky